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Council says CLT baseline needs local review, warns of disadvantaging Washington manufacturers
Summary
Members questioned a North American CLT baseline (reported ~134 kg GWP) versus U.S. data (~155 kg), and asked staff and technical experts to examine whether including CLT or which numeric baseline would disadvantage local manufacturers.
Members raised concerns that the CLT (cross‑laminated timber) baseline in the Carbon Leadership Forum dataset may understate U.S. values because it includes Canadian data. The chair warned the inclusion could disadvantage Washington manufacturers.
"You're looking at a mean over North American manufacturers, and that first point concerns me because Canadian data is not the same as US data," the chair said, noting Washington manufacturers may have higher measured values. He added that a North American average could "pull the number down significantly."
Roger Haringa and others urged the council to include CLT in the product table rather than omit it (which would effectively exempt CLT from the calculation). "If we do not have it included, you can exclude all of the CLT in your project," Haringa said, noting that removing a major structural material from calculations would reduce the meaningfulness of a whole‑building embodied‑carbon score.
The council asked staff to follow up with experts and public commenters to identify an appropriate baseline for CLT or alternative ways to treat the material so the policy does not unevenly penalize or favor local producers.
